purged anyone who failed to meet his exacting standards. “I have
caused the removal from the service of a considerable number of
employees,” he informed White and other special agents. “Some
have been lacking in educational ability and others have been
lacking in moral stamina.” Hoover often repeated the maxim “You
either improve or deteriorate.”
Though Hoover conceded that some might deem him a
“fanatic,” he reacted with fury to any violations of the rules. In the
spring of 1925, when White was still based in Houston, Hoover
expressed outrage to him that several agents in the San Francisco
field office were drinking liquor. He immediately fired these
agents and ordered White—who, unlike his brother Doc and many
of the other Cowboys, wasn’t much of a drinker—to inform all of
his personnel that they would meet a similar fate if caught using
intoxicants. He told White, “I believe that when a man becomes a
part of the forces of this Bureau he must so conduct himself as to
remove the slightest possibility of causing criticism or attack upon
the Bureau.”
The new policies, which were collected into a thick manual, the
bible of Hoover’s bureau, went beyond codes of conduct. They
dictated how agents gathered and processed information. In the
past, agents had filed reports by phone or telegram, or by briefing
a superior in person. As a result, critical information, including
entire case files, was often lost.
Before joining the Justice Department, Hoover had been a clerk
at the Library of Congress—“I’m sure he would be the Chief
Librarian if he’d stayed with us,” a co-worker said—and Hoover
had mastered how to classify reams of data using its Dewey
decimal–like system. Hoover adopted a similar model, with its
classifications and numbered subdivisions, to organize the
bureau’s Central Files and General Indices. (Hoover’s “Personal